Monday, April 25, 2005

Here are three poems my Maine author Robert P. Tristram Coffin, from his collection "Saltwater Farm" (illustrated by JJ Lankes incidentally). The poems have a regionalist or New England sensibility about them, with references to working the earth, and a keen perception of nature, much like in Lankes woodcuts.

THE FOG

He knew how Roman legions looked, for heHad seen the Maine coast fogs march in from the seaFor many years now, in the August days.They came in mighty columns up the bays,Tawny and gray and silver in the sun;They trampled out the seaports one by one,The islands and the woods, with their high hosts,And pushed the world back inland from the coasts.

This little house was lost, these hills and dells,Cows in pasture faded into bells,The world around a man closed in and inTill nowhere was ten paces from this chin.A man drew up and halted with a startTo be so close to his beating heartAnd left so to himself and wholly blindTo everything but what was in his mind.

This was the peril and the comfort, too,A man who lived in such a region knew;On any Summer's day, within an hour,He might be blind and naked to a powerSo vast, it might have come from stars unmade,Undreamt of, even, making him afraid,So mightier than the night that he could guessHow life was but a name for loneliness.

FOOTSTEPS OF FLAME

His father had explained it all to him;How rockweed in November at the rimOf ebb tide showed a phosphorescent markWhen you stepped upon it in the dark.That was all the story. Just the same,The boy still thought the footprints were still a flame,And he believed their feet must give out light,Which made them show up plain there in the night.

You could not get around it. There they lay,Footmarks you could see as plain as dayComing up from behind as they walked,The big ones and the little. While they talkedOf things of everyday, the steps came on,There must be something to them so they shone.It was simplest to believe 'twas soAnd not trust things a small boy could not know.

That was the beginning. But it spread,Until it got into the small boy's headThat always when his father was alongSomething burned inside them that was strongAs sunlight, fierce and hot and clean,Something very lovely though unseen,And sometimes he had hard work no to stareAs though a wing had stirred his father's hair.

TAKING THE TURN

The best time on a farm is whenSleep lies on the most of men.

It is when you rise and goBy starlight, through the dew or snow,

With your lantern by your side,To see that all is right outside.

You take your turn to see all the housed;The cows with velvet eyeballs drowsed.

The hens grown gentle as the dove,Bunched all together in their love.

The utter peace of sleeping pigs,Strange lacework of the maple twigs.

The fairy world that spiders spinAlong the corners of the bin.

The house's gable high with night,Familiar things made strange by light.